Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE
BECK
Mutations
(Geffen)
As he said in these pages recently, it doesn't really matter if we consider this latest effort a stop-gap detour - as it's been touted - or a Beck album proper.
Just don't be expecting the full soundclash of Odelay with its hip-hop turntables and beatboxes meeting Beck's bent pop sensibility.
Instead, it's Beck and the terrific band he brought down here at the beginning of the year in a sit-down-and-strum sort of mood.
An approach which gives us Beck the psychedelic folkie, the country and blues picker, the bossa nova popster, and even Beck the prog-rocker with occasional urges towards something American Gothic.
Makes for one quietly dazzling album, the 13 songs reminding of Beck's way with a tune, a seeming incoherent but strangely cohesive lyric and a time-warp arrangement.
The songs come semi-powered by a creaking bunch of keyboards: the speakeasy piano in O Maria, the elegant harpsichords of We Live Again and at the start of the album's big rock wig-out, Diamond Bollocks.
That six-minute song, coming late in the running, is the most head-spinning thing on offer -- all Helter Skelter fuzzed-up swagger with occasional pauses for birdsong.
Acoustic guitar with a backing of sitar and strings makes the hymnal Nobody's Fault But My Own one of his more affecting recorded moments.
There seem to be tumbleweeds caught in the cracks of the country-folk Sing It Again and Cancelled Check, while the twisted bossa nova pop of Tropicalia is as near as this gets to party music.
And if you are looking for the sonic signature of producer du jour Nigel Godrich (OK Computer) it's on the wind-up to Static with its Radiohead-meets-Beach Boys grand chimings. And it's quite a headphones album throughout.
Actually it's quite a Beck album, official follow-up, tangential recording or not. More evidence of his genius this way lies. * * * *
TALL DWARFS
Fifty Flavours of Glue
(Flying Nun)
This latest album from possibly the longest running recording partnership in New Zealand rock shows they might have gone the long way round, but they seem to have discovered the blues.
There's definitely a bluesy twang to the likes of Like Someone Else, with Chris Knox doing another bit of spooky bit of Lennon channelling, as well as the blues-folk pickin' of I Want Out and behind the hollering Fatty Fowl In Gravy Stew.
All sound is born from the delta mud of Coxs Creek -- as seriously polluted as the rest of the bent pop on offer in a over-generous 17 tracks.
There's the trademark Dwarf-ian effort at setting a cupboard full of specimen jars to music on the lead track, Gluey Gluey. There's similar rock-out fun on the likes of Just Do It and the album's best pop moment, Fragile, which sounds exhumed from a 60s garage band.
And elsewhere there's other stuff that is variously there for the sonic dare (like the backwards guitars and strange croon to Endure), slight, or clumsy (the priest-child abuse tale of Communion. Songs like that make this album -- despite some gems -- a very mixed blessing. One for the fans? * * *
FATBOY SLIM
You've Come A Long Way Baby
(Skint)
Fatboy Slim is the latest incarnation of onetime Housemartin Norman Cook, who's long been the groove boffin behind outfits like Beats International.
He was also responsible for the remix of Cornershop's Brimful of Asha which turned it into a hit and now, before he heads here for the Big Day Out, he offers a positively pneumatic 12 tracks of the stuff they're calling Big Beat. Which for Cook means dressing up the stiff nothing-but-snare pulse of his music with dollops of ska, guitars, and soul and hip-hop vocals sampled wholesale.
It works best when the purloined bits are roughing up the grooves to the infectious single The Rockafella Skank, Soul Surfing (where a ska bassline meets the Olympics' digitised vocals) and Praise You, with its soul-gospel piano and Sympathy for the Devil-like groove.
Not so successful are his excursions into synthesiser-ravaged electronica which rather lets the side down. Still, another nomination for party record for the summer -- even if it's a coaster by this time next year.
* * *
MINOR MENTIONS
Out of Sight soundtrack (Universal): Featuring the score work of moody Irish electro-groove man David Holmes, a couple of lesser-known Isley Brothers funk tracks, Dean Martin's Ain't That a Kick in the Head and bites of dialogue from the Elmore Leonard-adapted film. It comes out as cool as it sounds.
Various, Red Hot & Rhapsody (Antilles): The latest in the ongoing series of Aids benefit albums reworks the songs of George and Ira Gershwin with a general sense of funkiness and, well, summertime. Standout tracks include Spearhead and Ernest Ranglin's take on I Got Plenty of Nuthin', Finley Quaye's scatterbrained It Ain't Necessarily So and Clark Terry's Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. A fine companion piece to the original Red Hot and Blue collection of Cole Porter songs.
--Weekend TimeOut, 28/11/98